Star Profile Glen Gerstner counsels for keeps
By John Temple Ligon
Temple@TheColumbiaStar.com

Dr. Glen Gerstner

The percentage of marriages ending in divorce is falling, finally. The old declaration of "half of all marriages end in divorce" is no longer the case. The fortunate trend is hard to explain. Maybe enough families have gained access to family counselors over the past decade. Or maybe psychology as an academic elective is gaining students. Columbia's Glen Gerstner is a family counselor and a psychology teacher, and between the two pursuits, he is helping to turn the tide.

Gerstner was born in McKeesport, Penn., a little south of Pittsburgh. His father was in the printing business, and Gerstner picked up work there after college at Washington & Jefferson in Washington, Penn.

His sister, five years older, is a public school psychology counselor in Hershey, Penn. The chocolate candy company has an orphanage, a famously well-endowed orphanage, and they send their problem children to see Gerstner's sister.

After a stint in his father's printing operation, Gerstner mastered the franchise restaurant business, which brought him to Columbia in 1980. Two years later, he joined Colonial Life for the next 17 years.

While at Colonial, Gerstner worked on sales incentives, travel management, meetings and conferences, competitive intelligence, and strategic research. Leaving Colonial in 1999, Gerstner began his academic pursuit for professional standing as a family counselor.

While working on his master's degree in counseling psychology, Gerstner took on responsibilities in conflict resolution and mediation. Upon entering his climb to a doctorate in psychology (PsyD), Gerstner also entered the counseling business in three major areas: (1) individual, marriage, and family therapy; (2) child and adolescent counseling; (3) career and vocational counseling.

He attained his PsyD in 2005, which was about the time he joined the Columbia campus of Southern Wesleyan University. In short order, he also joined the faculty at Midlands Technical College, where he teaches the introductory course in psychology to three sections, two days a week.

In addition to college teaching and private practice, as a National Certified Counselor (NCC), Gerstner works two days a week with the Christian- oriented Crossroads Counseling Center at their two locations in Irmo and in Lexington.

In his private practice on Devine Street, behind Fortay in the 3100 block, Gerstner takes clients by appointment for usually just under an hour each. He helps his clients resolve issues in their relationships, especially marriages. He and his clients meet their anxieties head on and accomplish their goals, both through talk therapy combined sometimes with pharmacology.

Gerstner is a believer and a practitioner in The National Marriage Project (http://marriage.rutgers.edu) at Rutgers, also known as The State University of New Jersey. He particularly appreciates their "Ten Myths of Marriage" and the companion Ten Myths of Divorce , which should be required reading by everybody, and Gerstner really means everybody. Commitment, Gerstner laments, appears to have too many definitions. There's really just one, and that means COMMITMENT.

Gerstner's daughters are his joy and his passion. Morgan, 17, is at Cardinal Newman, and Anne Marie, 14, at A. C. Flora. Seen daily at the Columbia Athletic Club, Gerstner stays with it and stays in shape. His reading is mostly non- fiction, and for now mostly on Jungian psychology.

A teacher and a counselor, Gerstner is in it for the long haul, and he wishes his clients' marriages the same.